People Who Mean Something to Us will Always Mean Something to Us

What does it mean to truly let someone go?

It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel right.

Sitting in the pit of my stomach,

I don’t want to rid myself of you.

Do I have a choice to never remember someone I care deeply for?

How could you let someone go if you forever remember them?

When we let go of someone we love,

All those experiences, all those words of wisdom,

all that prior presence,

manifests itself as part of the things that consciously and unconsciously change you.

People who mean something to us will always mean something to us.

Them just meaning this much means something.

Your interpretation of the thing makes meaning. The meaning associated with the thing itself evolves as you experience new experiences. Where the previous interpretation presents itself in a new light and therefore this new interpretation contributes to the meaning of the original thing.

The same thing infinitely evolving within your finite existence adding meaning to this life you’re presently living.

To let go of someone you love,

You must consciously acknowledge you cannot reach them.

They cannot be turned toward, leaned on,

seen.

You will never know how you’ve impacted them or how new experiences have contributed to any future interpretation of their everyday life.

You will no longer bear witness to them.

To let go of them you can consciously choose to take them with you.

Letting go when you’d rather choose not to.

Teachers of humility, courage, and free choice.

Ethical mentors that perpetually reverberate the things we’ve learned in life,

Our relational sound boards.

Our space for private inquiry and internal exploration.

Our therapists.

How has your experience with this person contributed to your understanding of who you’ve come to be thus far?

Why do we let go of people?

People who we love dies.

People who would rather not communicate.

They couldn’t confront themselves or you.

They couldn’t grow with you.

When someone who saw you no longer sees you.

What it felt like to be seen when they saw you comes with you.

What if you notice no one sees you like them?

What does that end up meaning to you?

Revelatory moments of ourselves.

Never-ending.

You know what it feels like to be truly seen.

People manifest as change in us across a lifespan.

They fall to the tapestry of lived experience reappearing from the engagement with something that elicited original thoughts of them.

Coffee shop in a museum of art.

Dirty chai.

Leaning backwards. I look up.

Accordions dangled from the ceiling above me, how couldn’t I think of you.

Sipping and swirling with notes of insight.

With the deepest sense of gratitude for free choice.

What a bright light. . .

#insight

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

#futureself

#time

#space

#agency

#freechoice

#change

#presentmoment

#bepresent

#presence

#beingseen

#beingheard

#showingup

#vulnerablity

#courage

#memories

#existentialangst

#angst

#hereandnow

#whatsatstake

#beseen

#lovedeeply

#existential

#existentialdread

#trusttheuniverse

#existentialphenomeology

#victoriaventurella

#relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence

#futureself #infinitepossibilities

#existentialpsychotherapy

Relationships do not magically begin where you want them to be

Relationships do not magically begin where you want them to be. You must work toward having a shared existence you both want to live in. However you expected it to be won’t be how it actually is. Your partner is an entirely different human being with their own mind, and they have their own ideas as to how they imagined this going.

We all like to think that we could find “the one” that fits perfect with us, but in all reality the ones that fit perfect with us in the beginning ends up eventually having ruptures and dissonance that will need to be worked through together. Two human beings that come together will never be absolutely on point at all times. The only thing you can do is acknowledge when you are not and make space together to figure out where to go from there.

If what you imagine wanting in a relationship is not happening in the first few months with someone, consider what it is you are really wanting. Is it marriage? Is it kids? Is it everyday cuddles? Is it the everydayness of life you want to share with someone? Is it that you want to build a life with your best friend and support each other’s growth and dreams? Now consider how do you get to that point with someone? Do you skip the dates for dinner and a movie? Do you skip the endless conversations to figure out who each other are? Do you start from knowing deeply, loving deeply, and living fully enmeshed? Relationships take work to get to a place where longevity is prominent. It takes time to be the others other in this full-bodied all-encompassing way.

Then there are those people who meet and after only a few encounters they know they must be with that person. Are we all living for a situation like this to occur? These stories are rare and prevalent enough for them to exist as a rational possibility for us all to imagine it would occur for us too. If we never experience it, are we missing out? Is finding someone and facing the raw hard reality with the other meaningless? Even those people who feel they must be together after just a few encounters come up against the reality of their differences in who they are as people. There will be times where you do not understand each other, where you miss the other completely, where you disappoint the other without even understanding why, where you want to do something, but they want to do something else, where they think it is totally fine and you absolutely disagree. How you work together through these fissures is what moves the relationship along or contributes to its potential disintegration. You must learn to grow together, or you will grow apart preventing each other from fully blooming.

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

#relationships #infinitehuman #sharedexistence #beingseen #beingheard #activelistening #everdayliving #relationshipsarehard #relationshipsarework #communication #bepresent #besupportive #marriage #justmarried #theone #centralpurposetherapy #existential #existentialphenomeology #victoriaventurella #relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence #futureself #infinitepossibilities #existentialpsychotherapy

Read Something that Provokes you to Read More

What illuminates for you when you see me, is something I could never see of myself.

Gliding along the surface keeping our eyes out for what shimmers in our ever-shifting temporal constellation. If we are to discover anything new along the way to where we are going, we must be open to change. I must be open to the idea that something beyond me right now could change me; anything other than me that I interact with has the power to change me.

You need the freedom to take a moment to read something when it provokes you to read more.

You continue to re-arrange your internal bookshelf, making space for the next must read.

When will you give yourself the space to learn freely?

Why must you always be doing something else when something over here sparked your curiosity?

Only in the preservation of art, does it extend beyond the experience it was originally created in. It is in the experience we consciously occupy that we are drawn into the ideas that were once written. We mingle in the space that exists between the book and our mind as it leads us into an unescapable dialogue with ourselves in an adventurous form. Experiential moments that render time transform us, because if something moves you, it shows you something in relation to yourself.

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

#readmore

#read

#reading

#maketime

#makespace

#beproductive in all of life.

#freedom

#internaldialogue

#letsgo

#timelessness

#giveyourselfpermission

#creative

#centralpurposetherapy

#existential

#existentialphenomeology

#victoriaventurella

#relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence

#futureself #infinitepossibilities

#existentialpsychotherapy

How many unsent letters do you file in your mind?

How many times does it take you to form the first sentence?

Back spacing in deep thought.

Where do you put all those love letters?

last words never said?

What about all those questions?

potential proposals?

all that honesty?

sudden arrivals of insight?

Why haven’t you told them yet?

Are you afraid of true love?

Why do you think you have forever?

Why would you wait to tell them what you continually wish to share with them?

Being vulnerable is transformative and healing.

What about those moments that you no longer feel like you are where you were?

Where do you file all the letters you write yourself? Those meaningful monologues of the deepest internal texture?

You don’t have to journal everyday to journal.

#journaling

#unsentletters

#writeletters

#havehardconversations

#fallinlove

#livedeeply

#lovedeeply

#liveloudly

#loveloudly

#beauthentic

#existentialquestions

#askmorequestions

#existentialangst

#angst

#hereandnow

#whatsatstake

#beseen

#lovedeeply

#existential

#existentialdread

#trusttheuniverse

#existentialphenomeology

#victoriaventurella

#relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence

#futureself #infinitepossibilities

#existentialpsychotherapy

Victoria Venturella, MA, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

Infinity lives in every moment

Infinity is a condition we experience in living.

There is an infinite number of possibilities within every present moment. To sense every possible part of what is here doesn’t come at first glance. You have to pause to wonder. You have to stop to consider what is at hand in every possible manner.

To reduce the situation at hand into layers of our own perception.

But what if a bright light cast itself upon this moment would we capture all it has to offer us? Would we see the thing for itself?

The light becomes the focal point rather than enhancing the things for themselves. You take up a scene, with things, within things, within a thing. To take in the things before you acknowledge the light that contributes to you seeing it.

Even whatever you are seeing may not be the fullness of what could be seen. There are always more questions to be asked.

Nothing is ever a thing in itself. Your acknowledgement of its presence already only can be revealed in so much as you are able to see it.

Everything presents itself as something else. Something in itself is not you. You are fundamentally separate from all things in the world.

We see the world through ourselves. Every interpretation of all things goes through our internal breakdown of understanding whatever this something is.

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

#infinity

#presentmoment

#philosophy

#merleauponty

#inspiration

#phenomenologyofperception

#thething

#thethingsthemselves

#nothingissomething

#livedexperience

#existentialangst

#angst

#hereandnow

#whatsatstake

#beseen

#lovedeeply

#existential

#existentialdread

#trusttheuniverse

#existentialphenomeology

#victoriaventurella

#relationshipwithself

#communication

#transcendence

#futureself

#infinitepossibilities

#existentialpsychotherapy

Victoria Venturella, MA, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist, LMHCA

Even dogs leave us too soon

It doesn’t feel good to feel your heart hurting.

You give yourself to the universe knowing your heart will be broken over and over again. To experience the full breadth of love.

Even dogs leave us too soon.

A life without letting yourself feel fully doesn’t feel any better.

If you proceed into whatever will be without holding back, you may experience something that it is significantly different than the rest.

Where the potency of its knowing, seeing, hearing, being with, enlivens you.

The power of the future not yet.

What if the best experiences of your life are still not yet lived?

It might hit you one day. Out of nowhere.

You are in the living room tying your shoes.

You hear them coming closer, their bare feet across the cherry wood hall.

Dancing in silence, as if your favorite song was on, their scent lingers.

Enamored, in awe, you acknowledge this is the human you built this all with.

People arrive and you have no idea when they will be here.

What are you waiting for?

Go on, lean in.

Why are you saving to feel this later?

You may outlive your dog but what if you never felt that much love?

It is better to have felt the full breadth of love then to protect yourself from feeling heart break?

There will always be tragedy in life. Live your life vibrantly.

Knowing what it feels like to love something this much, mirrors the beauty in living.

How could you experience the fullness of what love has to offer if you only bring a part of you in?

What does going all in look like for you?

What are you afraid of happening if you let yourself love them fully?

How long do we teeter on the edge of something that offers us much more?

If you believe the mystery ahead is special, it will be.

#mindset

#whatyoutellyourselfmatters

#letyourselflovefully

#livividly

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

#liveloudly

#youmustfullyparticipate

#love

#dreambigger

#beseen

#beheard

#feellove

#lovedeeply

#loveyourself

#yourarepowerful

#youarehere

#youexist

#existential

#existentialangst

#existentialdread

#trusttheuniverse

#youchoose

#createyourlife

#compassion

#existentialphenomeology

#victoriaventurella

#relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence

#futureself #infinitepossibilities

#existentialpsychotherapy

Victoria Venturella, MA, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist, LMHCA

If you keep it all inside, you’ll never hear yourself say it.

If you never say it out loud then you won’t benefit from hearing yourself say it. Especially when someone else is listening simultaneously helping you to see it.

Other people show us ourselves.

When you say something out loud to the other, you hear yourself say it. Something happens when you acknowledge what you just said.

When you see that I see. The response to what is said is experienced verbally and non-verbally suspending all judgement. Bringing something to you in the purest form of authenticity for the betterment of who you are becoming.

The experiences you have stay with you. An interaction between you two arrives as a kodak moment at some unfamiliar juncture in a future present moment.

Every experience summons previous experiences. Whether consciously or unconsciously we make sense of what we are experiencing in the here and now. Unfamiliarity instantly reveals itself along the ambiguous edges of what we automatically find familiar. Sitting in the garden room anchored top of minds edge. Thoughts blossom rapidly in the immediacy of what is known as known and unknown. Questions take a seat, front row. They raise their hands pointing all over a map of meaning pressed deeply in minds wall. Full scenes and flashes of just one part dive into the deep end of our heart. Simultaneously placing our experience and our interpretations upon the present in ways we could not completely see for ourselves.

Every immediate connection in a present instance is not known. You will never know for certain what within the periphery of your focal point will reappear at some foreign unknown future present situation.

Questions come from and are answered through imagination. You would not have been able to conjure up such a plausible possibility had you not considered what could be based on what is. What is always includes part of what is not yet known. Even what is known can one day be known as something else. We must leave space in every present moment for the future to show us an unknown unknown. You can proceed with full certainty that you do not know everything. The ocean’s perpetual mystery and the endless ambiguity found in the universe existing beyond us, gives you uncertainty you can rely on. Human beings evolve. You can be for certain something manmade will exist in the future that may or may not advance our species, remaining forever unknown to you.
© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

How far do you expand thought?

When you think a thought does it stop right there?

Do you stretch it to every corner of the world?

Do you take it inward and sit with it real deep?

Do you blurt it out letting it fall into the room?

How far does your curiosity guide you?

Are you willing to unravel where this thought came from?

How many experiences merge for you to conjure such an interpretation?

What do you do when something you are thinking doesn’t make sense?

What thoughts do you choose not to entertain?

When do you let a thought go on purpose?

Where does it go when it feels like it evaporates?

What do you consciously do with thoughts that continually resurface?

Do you sound out your feelings on paper?

What do you do with all the images you imagine? Do you ever imagine painting them?

Sketching them out blanketly in the sky above the sea, lost in thought staring lightly blue.

What do you do with the thoughts you zone out deeply thinking about?

How far do those thoughts expand when you forgot everything else mattered?

What does it feel like to think in silence?

How many instruments do you hear in this song?

Have you ever considered how many things influenced one thought? Chain of thoughts? Perpetual thoughts?

What do you do when you realize something you do comes from your Mother? Father? Caregiver? Mentor? Partner? Friend? How many thoughts become attached to that?

Have you ever examined what you tell yourself and ponder where it comes from?

Those questions that flood our psyche.

Have you ever considered what led you to such a passion? Where is this energy stored?

What do you do with creative juices felt in abundance?

How many branches hold a potential possibility in this imaginative thinking tree?

How many thoughts get lost in your shower?

What about the last one before you sleep?

What about the thoughts that pertain to why we are even here?

What do you think it means to be free?

To be free we must all be free.

Have you ever challenged yourself to find your own answer?

Do you hinder your best-self due to the perception of the other?

How important is it to you to form your own opinion?

Caption- [How far do you expand thought?]

#thinkdeeper

#doresearch

#deepthinker

 #formyourownopinion

#philosophy

#poet

#deeppoems

#poems

#thinkingthing

#thinker

#think

#askmorequestions

#question

#existentialquestions

#showerthoughts

#freewill

#freedom

#deepconversations

Can you attempt to exist within the shoes of the other?

#thinktank

#brainstorm

#imagination

#imagine

#dreambigger

#dreambig

#ideamachiene

#youchoose

#loveyourself

#yourarepowerful

#youarehere

#youexist

#existential

#existentialangst

#existentialdread

#trusttheuniverse

#existentialphenomeology

#victoriaventurella

#relationshipwithself #communication #transcendence

#futureself #infinitepossibilities

#existentialpsychotherapy

Victoria Venturella, MA, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist, LMHCA

@ExistentialDialogues

@Centralpurposetherapy

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

““To perceive is suddenly to commit to an entire future of experiences in a present that never, strictly speaking, guarantees that future; to perceive is to believe in a world. It is this opening to a world that makes perceptual truth possible, or the actual realization of a Wahr-Nehmung, and permits us “to cross out” the preceding illusion, to hold it to be null and void. . .I was conscious of seeing a shadow and now I am conscious of having only seen a fly. My belonging to the world allows me to compensate for the fluctuations of the cogito, to displace one cogito in favor of another, and to meet up with the truth of my thought beyond its appearance (p.311). ”

— Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception

Separation does not inherently mean permanence.

As you walk along the sidewalk your feet cannot merge with the earth. The leaves in trees will forever blow beside you. As long as you are living the sky will exist above you. My hand against yours will forever be smaller and no matter how hard we press upon each other we will never completely merge. You can spin me out into the floor of life, letting go while still feeling my presence. We dance alone while still dancing together. Magnetically we coalesce cultivating our rhythmic promenade. Spiraling outwards into all the coordinates of this floor and then meeting again in the middle. We languish. We are forever foreign no matter how familiar. We enunciate where we are while we occupy the same space. To move together we must speak each other’s language. As we evolve individually new words will need to be translated to express the full scope of where we now find ourselves. To dance on the same floor, we must remain innovative. We will need to find new moves to grow together.

We choose to dance on the same floor for the rest of our lives within the world of floors. One day one of us will stop dancing. The floor will never reflect absence into our eyes quite like this day. Where the music streams together scenes of our shared moments, you imagine leaning me backwards. We both feel weightless. I am a memory within the permanence of our separation. Forever in your arms, forever separate.

As you whisper silence softly into my ear, embers flutter all around us from the burning fire of adventure we both loudly ruminate on. While we travel, we still dance. Alone I travel at the edge of the world along the tracks of this sacred solitude. I lean my head against this leather seat watching the trees merge from constant motion. Lifting my cheek from the seat I draw my attention inward staring at the empty seat before me. Imagination begins to paint you into where I am. Your eyes smiling at me, you tap my foot with yours. As you look out the window with me, your laughter echoes through my mind, and I am here. Where I am. Becoming aware of the time, I am no longer somewhere else. The mountain side takes the shape of our windows. You are not home. I listen to the bird singing outside, and I accept that what will be, will be. Separation does not inherently mean permanence. Your absence does not sadden me. Even if I sat along the floor weeping in the reflection of your Truest absence, I would still dance once I stood up. Often in your honor. I will not always have something to hold on to, I may be twirling solo infinitely through the center of the floor. I can exist without you, enjoy the world I live in, and still await your presence. Wherever we are, we are. It is possible for two people to be together without belonging to one another. Where they have a sacred relationship that takes on its own form. No one is obligated to stay, to be the others Other. The choice to be together is always on the table.

Cherish the experience you have in world with all things. Even a separation of impermanence could unintentionally be permanent. Life has its way of casting tragedy upon us and giving us new gardens to eat from. In the absence of the Other you may see how much their presence means to you. Even if when they are present you know this, in their absence it becomes clearer.

You are a being-in-the-world. You live in a fundamental separateness from everything that exists beyond you, while you can never separate yourself completely from the world while you are living. No exposure, no disclosure, no nakedness, no corporeal friction will ever dissolve our asymmetrical nature. We will forever live-in relation to The Other.

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

Do not regret what you have done: Existence precedes essence

Every experience you have lived thus far contributes to the human being you are today. If you had the power to change your previously lived experiences, it would change who you have come to be and potentially the trajectory of how you have lived your life. You may not have been driven to study the things you have, your interests may have been different, you may not have found yourself in the specific relationships you have encountered. You may not know your children as they are, maybe you did not have children. Your personality and the way you relate to the world would no longer exist as you currently experience it.

You are born into a world that is not of your choosing. You cannot decide who your parents are, where you grow up geographically, what your name is, how you will be educated, what kinds of interactions you will observe, how you will be punished or treated, if you will be respected, protected, and loved. As a child you cannot choose to forego abuse, neglect, and any other traumatic experiences. These experiences shape how you interact with the world and become the backdrop you unconsciously and consciously pull from when making sense of the present situation across a lifetime. In fact, it is highly likely that you will grow up to believe the way you were treated is how one is to be treated. Until one day your awareness shifts in your cognitive maturation, when you witness opposition in the way others respond to you and world. Holding yourself in contempt for the choices made before and after your cognitive faculties fully develop prevents you from embracing your whole self in its truest form in each present moment. You cannot separate yourself from who you have come to be. You can only move forward.

When we move into adulthood, we become the agent of our lives. Your choices are now only yours to make. These choices are grounded in the understandings of what you have come to know up until this point. It is up to you to utilize the resources within the world to discover what is known beyond you.

Whenever you are making a choice, pay attention to what is present within you. That internal voice is your authentic internal dialogue. Let yourself engage with the back-and-forth movement of thought. When you make choices that align with your moral compass and you choose choices that are authentically sound, you will never regret the life you have chosen to live. If you could stand behind the choices you make completely for where you are in this moment of time when the choices were made, then how could you regret the choices you have made if you honor your present and past self with compassion?

To love yourself completely you must love everything you have been through. Even the things that cause you to feel embarrassed or shameful. You will forever depart from yourself. If you depart from a place of love and compassion you will paint your external landscape in similar hues of wonder.

Author: Victoria Venturella, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

How to live with uncertainty:

·      Acknowledge you do not know everything. There are the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns.

·      Embrace being a life-long learner.

·      Accept that the way you imagine it will be, will be different.

·      Find beauty in mystery, surprise, experience without translation, and the distance of time.

·      Knowing the outcome before its occurrence is humanly impossible. You must accept you will never know exactly how your job, relationship, week, or day will go.

·      Know you will not always have a way to describe what you want to articulate.

·      You will never know the wisdom of your future self before you are there.

·      You must accept that you may not know the reason for why any of this exists in your lifetime.

·      Accept uncertainty as a foundation of life.

·      You are an architect of your own life. Build the frame for experience to live in.

Author: Victoria Venturella, MA, Existential Phenomenological Psychotherapist, LMHCA

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

Expect the Unexpected

You can count on there being something unknown about every given situation. You cannot be for certain what someone will say. How the meeting will go. When you will receive a phone call, or an email, or a knock on your door. You cannot know how a relationship will evolve, if you will get married, if you will have children, if it will all work out as you hope.

You cannot know exactly how you will feel 10 years from now about this specific subject matter. You may have evolved so far beyond where you are right now that you have a completely new perspective.

Everything between now and the next moment is undetermined. We cannot control the weather. We can not control the response of others.

We do have control over how we respond to the situation. The situation could play itself out as we had imagined it would, or not. You can strive to get to where you aspire to be, and you may just get there. Proceed as if you will.

Proceed as if it will work out.

Just know that one thing is for certain, you cannot know for certain what will occur in the future. We can depend on ambiguity to perpetually exist in all parts of life.

© Victoria Venturella, Existential Dialogues, The Existentialist

#presentsituation

#control #respond

#expect #unexpected #future

#grounding #truth

#feltsense

#unexplainable

#justfeelsright

#goingforit

#uncertainty

#unknown #thisislife #existence #notknowing #lifelonglearner #humanbeing

#living

#ambiguity

#experience

#centralpurposetherapy

#existential

#existentialphenomeology

#victoriaventurella

#pastpresentfuture

#past

#present

#existentialpsychotherapy

Running for Time

My feet hit the ground full force. Dodging people and hopping over puddles I only have two more minutes or else I will miss the train. It feels nearly impossible to make it but there isn’t time for thoughts such as this. If I had just left sooner. If I hadn’t gone back inside to look just one more time. As I arrived the train departed as if my presence was a slingshot for its synchronistic absence. Drops of rain hit my forehead. The further the train moved from me the more breath I regained. What once felt like a sinking feeling quickly morphed into relief. Suddenly I felt like I had more time. I didn’t have to go just yet. I could be right where I am. Right here. Right now.

No matter where you were going, now you have time to be wherever you already are.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues